


Equality for All

by karakael



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 19:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karakael/pseuds/karakael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a bit of world building dealing with how and why Amon developed blood-blocking, and what he was doing before coming to Republic City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equality for All

“Excuse me? Please, stop!”

A frazzled young woman called out, then ran to catch up to the two men. Noa and Liu exchanged glances. Had the villagers guessed their identities?

“You’re Noa, right?” The woman panted, then composed herself. “You wouldn’t remember me, but…but my son has developed fire-bending, just as you warned! Please, will you help me?”

Liu stared, shocked that someone recognized Noatak at all, almost hurt that there were people who recognized him from before his time in Republic City, but even more surprised when his companion relaxed and nodded at once.

“Show me to the boy.”

Relief flooded the woman’s face. “Thank the spirits it’s you, sir. I was terrified I had the wrong man.” She led them back into the village, where faces appeared in windows and rumors began to run. Liu shifted closer to his friend, but the younger man barely seemed to register it. Amon – no, _Noa_ , Liu corrected himself – seemed to know exactly what was going on, knowledge that Liu sorely wished he would share. 

Instead, the former revolutionary was asking a steady stream of questions to the young woman, none of them making any sense.

“How old is the boy?”

“Five years, sir.”

“His father?”

“Is from the Earth kingdom. He’s taking the caravan into the city. Had I known, Hans would be with him!”

“What of your…brother, was it?”

“Sister, sir. She moved to Republic city eight years ago.”

They rounded a corner, and a low, desperate wailing erupted from one of the houses. The woman broke into a run, Amon – _Noa_ – striding right behind her.

“Liu, be careful!” He warned, before something in the house exploded, lighting the paper windows and blowing the door open.

The former Lieutenant had never seen Noa use water-bending without disgust on his face, but now Noa didn’t even hesitate, tugging water from the surrounding gutters and dousing the flames without breaking stride. Liu followed behind, noting the new layer of ash settling upon older scorch marks. 

The woman was sitting on the floor, a small boy wrapped in her arms, her hair frizzing from the heat. 

“Ssssh, Shh. It’s going to be all right.” Her words were only marginally effective: the child was still spitting gouts of flame from his mouth, which turned his tears to steam and nearly ignited what remained of his clothing.

“I didn’t mean to!” He sobbed, his words nearly setting his mother’s hair aflame. “I hate this! Take It Away. TAKE IT AWAY!”

Burns covered the boy’s hands and arms, half open wounds that had been cauterized by the heat. Similar burns adorned his mother’s arms and legs, and Liu realized what he had taken for an abusive husband was in fact a terrified, uncontrollable child.

“Hush, Child.” 

The boy turned to Noa, and Liu realized where Amon had learned that voice of patient authority.

“I’ll take it away.”

Relief and hope washed over the boy’s face, and he struggled out of his mother’s arms, his hand immediately going to Noa’s cloak. “P-p- _please_.”

Noa knelt, then raised his eyes to the mother. “Are you certain?” 

A nod, and the chi-blocker placed his thumb on the child’s mind chakra and concentrated, using the same technique every bender in Republic City was familiar with.

A moment later, the boy opened his eyes. “Is it gone?”

“Try it.”

The five-year-old concentrated, breathing out in a long, slow breath, then inhaled sharply. “It’s gone! Mommy, I can’t hurt anyone anymore!” 

The woman grinned, and gathered her jubilant son into her arms.

“Thank you, sir. How long…”

“At his age, you have six weeks, at most. In the meantime, teach him the meditation exercises I taught your sister. Do you remember them?” 

The woman nodded. “When it returns…”

“Find him a teacher.” 

Her hands tightened around her child. “We don’t have the money. No bender will come out this far just to teach one child…”

Noa sighed. “But your sister will. If she cannot leave the city, send the boy to her.” At her worried expression he added “He can learn what he needs in two months, at most. You won’t be separated long.”

She relaxed, and nodded over her son’s head. “We’ll think about it when Lu-Ren returns.”

\--------------------- 

The woman insisted on feeding them before the left, peppering them with thanks even as she pulled her remaining yuan’s from a fire-proof box and was shocked when Noa refused them. So it was several hours before Liu could confront Noa about this new information.

“Six _weeks_?” he hissed, when they were finally out of earshot. “You said removing bending was permanent!”

Noa sighed. “It is. Nothing short of spiritual intervention can undo the damage to the bending area of the brain.” A pause. “Except in children.”

He looked up, expecting some kind of reaction, but Liu was already too angry and to do more than glower.

“Children’s minds are incredibly resilient. They can heal themselves, find pathways around the damaged cells, and occasionally even co-opt other parts of the brain to assist with recreating the necessary neural pathways.”

“So that’s what you did before you came to Republic City? Traveled around blood-bending _children_?”

Noa sighed. “Broadly, yes. Small villages rarely have enough resources for a bending teacher. It’s not uncommon for bending to develop in one, maybe two children of a village, and with no one around to teach them, their powers can often go out of control. A few months’ respite gives the villagers enough time to figure out what to do with the child, while the child in turn has time to learn enough of the basic’s to stop lashing out.”

“So when we captured the Air Nation, you weren’t angry because they had ruined your plan or because you were going to traumatize children…but because you knew your demonstration wouldn’t work?” 

The thought bothered Liu. He had hoped the brief argument the two had before the rally had been an indication of the other man’s humanity. That he wouldn’t hurt children, or something like that. But now…now it seemed it was all more politics, and he stripped children of their bending without any hesitation.

Noa shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “That…was part of it. Having the air children relearn their bending, even in the months it would have taken them, would have given the other benders hope. Had Tenzin not been a fool and attempted to save the sinking air-ship, the Air-Children would have escaped, and we wouldn’t have had to deal with more _martyrs_.”

He kicked at a rock. “But I thought we agreed to not speak of that.”

“I thought we had agreed that you would tell me the truth.”

The former leader paused, his face impassive. 

“Fine.” He turned to Liu. “I never suspected the Avatar would realize my past. I wore the scars every day because I thought one of my former patients would recognize me.” 

He continued, after a brief moment, belaboring the point. “There are probably dozens of them in the city, and there were very few of us chi-blockers who could do what I did. I would have been instantly recognizable.”

Liu digested this. “How…how many children did you…”

“Several hundred.”

Republic City was a magnet for benders fleeing from small towns that didn’t understand their abilities. A mere dozen of Noa’s patient’s walking the streets was a _low_ estimate. And any one of them could have made the connection between the calm-voiced doctor and the revolutionary leader. Especially with as well-publicized as their work had been…

“But none of them came forward.”

Liu didn’t realize he had said it aloud until Noa chuckled.

“No, none of them did. It doesn’t surprise me.”

“Really?” Liu couldn’t believe it. Amon had _terrified_ the benders of Republic City. He’d been almost unanimously hated.

“I told you once, didn’t I? That there were probably just as many benders who supported our cause as non-benders.”

Liu snorted. He hadn’t believe it then, and he didn’t believe it now, even when he realized that Amon had likely been talking about himself. “No one would be foolish enough to _want_ their power taken away. _You_ didn’t, remember?”

The younger man slumped. “You say that with such certainty. I won’t argue it again. But…” 

He held up a hand, silencing Liu’s retort. “But think about them, not me. Not the monstrous blood-bender who can kill with a thought. Think about the girl who can barely light a candle, but is treated like a pariah by her mother. Or the boy who’s earth-bending sent him to the fields, where he was treated like a pack-horse rather than a real human. What reason have they to love bending?

“I’ve met children who were outcast from their villages for their bending. There was a real Amon, once, with scars and burnt fields, but his family’s death was because he couldn’t control the inferno that came from his own hands. There was a girl who accidentally moved a _river_ , and was responsible for the entire village having to move when the field’s dried up. Not to mention the Earth-benders who’ve buried alive their siblings, or have sunk villages and burst dams. Untrained benders can be _terrifying_. 

“But the fire-benders have it worst. These are former occupation lands. In the end, when the war got ugly and the military corrupt, the fire-benders simply took what they desired, with no thought to the consequences of their actions. There was no shame in being a bastard here, once. There was one – or two, or three – in every village. Those who looked like their fathers – hah, if you could call them that – were killed or abandoned, but there were many wherein fire-bending skipped a generation. 

“They call it a curse, to be born with fire-bending. These people are ethnically Earth-Nation; they have no concept of the meditation and control it takes to master fire-bending. And the children who have it are treated as lepers. Their abilities are a clear sign that either they or their parents were bastards, and they themselves have the same abilities that burned this land.

“Why the hell would they love bending? Its brought them _nothing_ but hatred and scorn for most of their lives. Do you know how many of those children begged me to take their bending away forever? So they could be “normal”? So their grandmother wouldn’t spit on the ground when she saw them? So they wouldn’t have to hate themselves every. Damn. Day?”

“Noa.” 

He blinked, and looked up at Liu. Fear and worry battled on the older man’s face, and the former revolutionary realized he’d been raving.

“Sorry.” Slowly he unclenched his hands and forced his voice down from the booming growl of Amon. “I know…I have no right to compare myself to them. Not after everything I’ve done. But an ability that makes you hated and you wish you could simply strip away? I understand that.”

He laughed, sadly. “And they must have understood me. Who would want to be a bender, when being a non-bender means a shot at equality?”


End file.
